1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention relates to nutritional supplements, foods, athletic dietary supplements, and frozen nutritional supplements.
2. Description of the Related Art
The traditional program for obtaining necessary vitamins and minerals is to attempt to eat a balanced diet and then to make up for the inevitable nutritional deficiencies by taking nutritional supplements and vitamin pills. However, for children, pill taking is difficult and sometimes impossible. So, instead of pills, liquid nutritional supplement solutions are offered. Unfortunately, children resist taking liquid supplements because they do not taste good. In addition, even if the liquid supplement tastes good, a child still may resist taking it because the child is stubborn and only will be "convinced" to take the supplement in a more attractive form.
The problem of pill taking is exasperated when the pill that the person is unable to take contains medicine. In some cases, liquid formulations are available. However, these syrups usually taste unpleasant. For these reasons, a good tasting means for taking medicine without pills is needed.
For athletes, nutritional supplements are typically packaged as sports drinks. Sports drinks help to replace fluids and electrolytes by containing water and nutrients. However, even when refrigerated, sports drinks are not able to cool the drinker sufficiently. In the case of a drink containing ice, the liquid is cooled to the freezing point but the liquid being consumed does not undergo a phase change inside the drinkers body. A phase change of solid to liquid (i.e., ice to water) absorbs significantly more heat than the heat transfer from the simple warming of a liquid.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,780,451, DeMichele et al. discloses several nutritional compositions. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,021,583, Mehansho et al. describes a stable nutritional vitamin and mineral supplemented beverage. These compositions are not frozen. In addition, no method of ingesting the composition in a frozen state is described.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,698,247, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,021,583, frozen confections and methods of making the same are disclosed. These confections are not nutritionally enriched.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,218,482, Cook et al. discloses a Frozen, Nutritious Pet Food. This product is a frozen composition of one-third oil, one-third gas bubbles, and one-third nutrients. Cook's invention is not directed at being good tasting but rather satisfying the pet owner's desire to give the dog a treat that the owner would expect to be tasty because as the inventor states, "If the owner doesn't buy it, the pet doesn't get to eat it." (col 1, lines 67-8). In addition, the composition comprises ingredients for a dog; these ingredients even when combined with other teachings still produce a composition that is palatable to pets only. By not tasting good, people consuming the food would not want to hold it in their mouth and allow it to melt; the consumer would not be able to absorb the nutritional elements through the mucosal and sub-lingual membranes of the mouth. The pet food also is oil based. Oil based products contain calories and cholesterol and are not considered "health food." In addition, Cook does not disclose a method of consuming or packaging the composition to enable absorption through the mucosal membrane of the mouth. Nor does Cook disclose a method of using the frozen composition to cool the pet.
Frozen electrolyte compositions are available under the tradename PEDIALYTE.RTM., a registered trademark of Ross Products Division, Abbott Laboratories, Inc., Columbus, Ohio. These freeze pops contain a solution containing electrolytes. The composition is designed to prevent dehydration particularly in infants. The PEDIALYTE.RTM. composition does not include active ingredients such as nutrients including carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and medicine.